and you have people like lindsey graham and john mccain who claim to be patriots who care about the pentagon and claim to care about the military, but yet they're really showing a lot of pique here. if we don't get what they want out of the administration on a completely separate issue they're going to penalize. they're going to penalize the pentagon. and that just to me is really not mature. it's not playing grown-ups. it's just using political leverage for your own hobbyhorse. and this is an issue that the president and others should try to take to the public -- >> my point in this is it could have been avoided. this is what elections are about. you get to be in a position to chait rules of the senate. you can't worry about the next senate. that's how i view it. and what could happen. the rules of the senate are not as important as running the country when we've got some critical issues -- >> i think that's a perfectly legitimate position to take, ed. and you know, i see it from both sides. but you know, harry reid decided not to go nuclear, which this would have been. and you know, that h